


I'll Be Home For Christmas

by Burning_Up_A_Sun



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, M/M, No real cheating, Parenthood, Separations, Snow and Ice, Sully is a bad man, mention of cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 15:16:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17123777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Up_A_Sun/pseuds/Burning_Up_A_Sun
Summary: After Geno kicked him out, Sid lived in a cold, lifeless apartment. Sharing custody of their 2 year old is hard, especially on Christmas Eve.TRIGGER WARNING: Mention of cheating (there's no cheating by the MCs), accusing Sid of Lying. so much angst.Brought to you by this photo:





	I'll Be Home For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. I saw the picture and that was the first sentence that popped into my head. I never write angst any more. So, forgive me. it's HEA, I double stinky pinky promise.
> 
> This was written for the [SidGenoPhotoChallenge.](https://sidgenophotochallenge.tumblr.com/) Go read more!
> 
> Note: 1/9/19 This was beta'd by the incredible Crowgirl42, who always gives her time so I can learn more and be a better writer. Tonight, I finally had time to address the snags she pointed out.

“She’s my daughter, too.”

Geno pretends I didn’t say anything.

He’s holding our daughter, two years old and the most beautiful girl in the world. Hope. Her name is Hope.

He’s whispering to her, and I’m afraid it’s about me. That I’m a bad father for leaving. That I broke up the family. That a real Christmas would be the three of us together in our home, instead of her and me in this pre-furnished, antiseptic apartment that has no remnants of our marriage or of him.

When he hands her to me, she reaches back for her papa. “I’m here,” I say softly, praying she’ll come willingly this time instead of crying for Geno. “I got a tree so Daddy and Hope can decorate it! What do you think?”

She nods and curls into my chest. Her hair tickles my nose, and I sneeze with an exaggerated _ahhhchooey_ which makes her laugh. Hope only lasts a few moments in my arms, before she’s squirming out, sliding down to the floor and running to find the grey cat, Stanley.

Geno watches her go, run down the hallway with its bare, boring eggshell walls. No, I haven’t decorated in the six months I’ve been here. What do I care. I skate, I play, I sleep. If I could sleep at the arena, I would, just to avoid coming home to this nothing.

“Thanks for bringing her by in this weather,” I say, my arms crossed over my chest deliberately, shielding myself from him. “Between the sleet and the ice—”

Geno shifts uncomfortably in the foyer, the snow melting on his shoulders and the Penguins knit beanie that was once mine. Off his shoes leaving a growing stain where he stands. “Could come home, Sid.”

My heart slams into my chest, and I feel like it’s breaking all over again. “We’ve done this all, Evgeni. You don’t believe me.”

The silence congeals between us. A year ago it was small, easily repairable. Months ago it was bigger, but we still could have fixed it if we’d committed to working on it.

Here we are.

Two houses, no homes.

The low rumble of the snowplow mingles with a feral hiss and a squeal of happiness; Hope found Stanley.

“Maybe I’m make mistake,” Geno says to his hands. I’m glad he doesn’t look at me, because I’m pretty sure I couldn’t hold back crying if he did.

“When you accused me of cheating or when you kicked me out? Or when you said I was a liar?” My voice is cold, frigid like the ice blanketing Pittsburgh and even less inviting.

Geno has nothing to say to that.

“Hopey, baby. Come say good-bye to Papa.” She tears up the hall and slides the last few feet on the slick hardwood.

“Bye bye, Papa.” Hope hugs Geno around the knees. His breath catches; he’s miserable leaving her. It was written in the slump of his shoulders, the tremble in his voice as he repeats _bye bye._ Now he knows how I feel every time I go.

“Back Wednesday at 4. Give you Christmas eve and Christmas day.” He says it into her neck, but it’s to me.

He leaves, and when the door snicks shut, Hope whimpers and a big, fat tear rolls down her cheek. I don’t have Geno’s experience with parenting. He’s been with her since we brought her home from the hospital; but between travelling with the team and the playoffs last year and filming endorsements, I’m not around enough for 50-50 parenting. I’m not even around enough for 75-25 parenting.

I squat so Hope and I are eye to eye. “What should we do first? Decorate the tree or find Stanley?”

She blinks her long lashes and grins at me like I’ve just offered her the riches of the world. I love her so much, and I’d do anything to keep her safe. And when I look at her, I see Geno in the shape of her eyes, the curl of her hair. But her smile is crooked, like mine and Aunt Taylor’s. We don’t know which of us is her biological father; we were just _fathers_ and that’s what mattered. 

I hold her close for a few moments until she decides. “’Tanley,” she says, then in Russian adds that she loves him.

“Go look for him. With your eyes, not your hands.” And she’s off. Before I can un-crouch, there’s a knock on my apartment door. Mrs. Prezinsky said she’d bring by cookies—

Geno.

“Plowed in, and sleet is turn to ice.” He stays in the doorway, not in my apartment and not in the hallway. “Can borrow snow shovel? Then I’m go.” Geno looks beaten down, weary, like he’s one snafu away from breaking. “I’m try to dig out with hands but...”

“I don’t have a shovel, G.” I wave my hand behind me. “I left them with you because—apartment.”

He looks up to the ceiling like he’s asking God _why?_ “I’m just—okay.” And he turns back to the hallway to leave.

His coat sleeves are soaked to the elbows; his jeans are wet from the ankle to the knee and plastered to his legs. _He shouldn’t have even gone out there, because he knows how easily he gets a cold,_ Sid thinks. “Just stay here,” my mouth says before my brain catches up. He opens his mouth to argue, but I cut him off. “We’ll figure it out. Just—stay. I’ll figure out something for you to wear.”

He re-enters the apartment, wringing his hat in his hands. I don’t blame him. I feel just as awkward and uncomfortable. I don’t know whether he’s a guest, and I should usher him in and offer him tea. Or whether he’s my husband and can figure it out by himself. It doesn’t matter. There’s a hiss and a crash and I take off down the hall to rescue Hope or Stanley.

Hope’s crying silently, her bedside lamp lying on the floor and shards of broken lightbulb at her feet. Stanley cowers in the corner behind her, his tail swishing ominously. I think he got tangled in the cord, and the lamp hit him before it hit the floor. I scoop her up and hold her, whisper that she’s alright even as I check her for cuts or bruises.

There’s a flurry of Russian that I don’t understand, and then, “Papa, Papa.” Not _Daddy._

“Shhh. You’re okay,” I say and wipe her tears with my finger. “Stanley’s okay, too. And—”

“Papa!” Hope squirms out of my arms, slides to the floor to try to get to Geno.

I turn, and it almost kills me. I can’t breathe. It’s like someone sucked all the air out of the room when I see him. He found the t shirt I’d hidden; worn, torn, a faded 87 on the chest. I’d stripped it off him one night when he was taking too long, teasing me. I’d ripped the neck by mistake as I pulled it, and—

I hid it when I moved here. Stuffed it in the bottom of the drawer.

“You should talk to her more in English,” I say like an asshole, when I want to say _Jesus I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe because I miss you so much._

“Your job. You talk English.” He shrugs, not saying that I’m not around enough.

And we start the snipe dance again.

“Daddy, help,” Hope says, and stopping her before she steps barefoot on a piece of lightbulb is more important than fighting with Geno. I skootch down and carefully pick up the glass so Hope can move from the corner. 

There’s a loud **pop** and then dark.

“What the f—“

I flip the wall light switch, like somehow that will bring the lights back. Geno snickers at me, and goes to the window, pulls aside the shade, and lets in a draft of cold air. “No lights.”

“What does that even mean?” I check for myself because he’s wrong.

Only he’s not. The sleet has frozen everywhere. The road looks like a pond ready for shinny. There are icicles on the power lines, and when I see the sparks at the transformers high on the poles, I get it.

“Shi—oot. It’s the transformers. This is gonna take time.”

Geno doesn’t understand, and for the first time in a long time, I kick myself for not following through and learning Russian. “There’s a short at the pole. No power ‘til the guys come to fix the lines.”

Hope tugs at my hand. “Daddy. Tree.” She looks up at me, and I’m helplessly in her power. When she giggles and tries to pull me toward the tree, I don’t even try to hold back.

Geno knows I would give Hope anything, that I would move the universe to make her happy. He smiles at me indulgently, and my heart stutters a beat or two, faint but it’s the first time in six months I feel it trying to mend.

“G, get the candles; that should be enough light,” I say over my shoulder. I’m unpacking the Target bags of Christmas decorations that I bought this morning, but Geno just stands there. I finally realize he has no idea where the candles are; then I realize, I don’t either. I probably don’t even own any.

Hope looks up to the ceiling and points. “Pleaserightnow.”

“Oh, honey. The lights are—broken.”

She makes an angry face first, but then decides to help me unpack the bags. She grabs the boxes of ornaments and tosses them onto the floor one after another. Thank God I was smart enough to buy plastic decorations.

“It’s gonna get cold in here,” I say as Geno rubs his arms for warmth. “I guess we could call Kris or Jack and see if they have power?” But when I look out the window, the street is empty of traffic; I don’t see any cars driving. Although my car is in the parking garage, I don’t think we could drive it on the streets at least until at least the salt trucks come. With a sigh, I turn back to the boxes of decorations.

Hope begins whining about the tree, and I don’t know what to do. I’m useless, trying to pick through the thousand ideas that whirl in my brain, each one certain it’s the most important or the most right. I don’t even know what to do first, let alone figuring out what Hopey needs. 

Geno kneels down to her height. “We have surprise tree. Decorate in dark; then when lights come on, we have big surprise. May be mess or may be best tree we ever have.”

I’ve been so angry with him that I forgot he was like this—easy-going and fun. Ready to make a game out of everything. He’s a great father, way better than I am. Maybe it’s because he and Hope are so alike.

I thread the tiny metal hanger on the plastic ornaments; Hope hangs it and runs back for another as Geno winds the lights around the evergreen tree. In the fading afternoon light, I see that the ornaments are all hung on the bottom string of lights, bunched up at two-year-old height. Some of the plastic balls are under the tree where she either dropped them or in her haste to get another ornament, she missed the wire.

It’s the most beautiful I’ve ever owned.

This is ours. Could be ours. If only I could say the right thing so that Geno would believe me.

Hope stands between me and Geno and looks back and forth, like she doesn’t know who to talk to. She chooses Geno and fires off Russian.

“She’s cold and hungry,” he translates. “I’m get sweater for her?”

“Take her into—my room. We’ll get under the covers and try to stay warm.” I have an idea, the tiniest fragment. But if it works—

I have a breakfast tray that one of the guys gave me when I was trying to put this place together fast. I load the tray with the peanut butter, the strawberry jelly. Bread. A knife. Paper plates and napkins. Juice boxes and bottles of water. I have a bag of pretzels; it’s the only junk food in the apartment. “Picnic time!” 

I push through the doorway into my room. Hope sits next to Geno at the head of the bed; they’re both wearing 87 Penguins sweatshirts that he’d pulled out of my bureau. There’s one laying on the bed for me. Out of habit he’s taken the left side of the bed, leaving my side open. Like that doesn’t hurt at all.

“Eat here?” she asks.

“Sure! It’s a Christmas picnic.” I try to sound cheery. “We’ll be roasty-toasty warm.”

I hand the tray off to G and grab the few extra blankets that I’ve stored in my closet. It’s not nearly enough. The temperature has already dropped. I feel it in the scrunch of my nose and the tips of my ears. I climb into bed as quickly as I can and pull the blankets tight Geno uses the phone’s flashlight so I can make sandwiches. In between he lights up his face and tries to scare Hope. She knows him too well and giggles instead. She hums a tune she probably learned in preschool, and Geno sings nonsense words.

I don’t know the tune.

Hope slowly fades, yawning through her song and dinner—juice box and the reindeer sandwich that Geno made from her pretzels, and a dot of strawberry jelly.

Geno kisses her forehead as I take our plates. “Cold.”

When I come back to the bed, we sandwich her between us. For a while we lie under the comforter, like a tent.

“Story, pleaserightnow.”

Geno looks at me. “You turn,” he says, and even though it’s quiet, it’s like thunder in our cocoon.

I tell her the story she’s heard a hundred times. A thousand times. It’s the one I love the best—the story of us. 

“Once upon a time, there were two daddies who loved each other very much. Soooo much. One day, Papa said, we should have a baby. Then, Daddy said, we _should_ have a baby. They wished, and they prayed that they would have a beautiful baby girl. It took a very long time, and just when Daddy had almost given up, they found out there was a teeny tiny baby for them. They were so happy they hugged and cried and cried and hugged. Do you know what they named her?”

Hope’s voice was slow with sleep. “What?”

“Silly girl,” I say as I gently brush her bangs off her forehead. “Because they had wished for her and hoped for her, they named her Hope.”

She didn’t hear the end of the story. She’d fallen asleep, her long lashes dark against her pale cheeks. These two. They’re my world. _Were_ my world. How did I fuck this up so badly. I’d yelled. I’d sneered. I’d run. But I never stopped long enough to talk. That’s how I’d fucked it up.

“What we do now?” Geno asks, motioning to get out of bed.

“Let’s stay here and make sure she’s warm.” I really don’t want him to leave me. Not right now, and not ever. This stupid fucking ice storm gives me the gift of time. _Please don’t let me fuck this up, too,_ I silently pray.

We lie in silence, the air under the blanket uncomfortably stuffy. I close my eyes and try to meditate, but I feel the pull of Geno, and I can’t concentrate. I want to ask him a hundred questions, but he is on his phone. And maybe I don’t really want answers.

I don’t know if it’s five minutes or an hour under there until his phone dies. He throws it out from under the blanket, and it hit the wall.

He turns to me. “Why you lie to me?”

“I didn’t.”

“Six months ago. You come home from road trip, too tired to fuck. Not problem, I say even though I’m want to be with you. I make you tea and you phone is in kitchen. Blowing up. Lots of messages. You sexting a woman.” His anger is calm, and it’s worse than yelling.

I sigh, and I feel the exhaustion of defeat nipping at me. If I can just follow my plan, it may just work out. Or it might be deader than Geno’s phone. “If I tell you, you won’t believe me. And I gave someone my word.”

“Someone more important than me? Than us?”

His words rip my heart from my chest, and suddenly the past six months feel like a sucking, gaping black hole that is my fault. For six months I let a fucking promise to my goddamn Coach keep me away from my entire world. I never thought Geno would believe me if I told him, but I’d never tried. It was time. 

“Look. Sully took my phone to text his girlfriend. Said he asked me because I’m the C and a team player.”

Geno’s laughter is ugly and cold. “May not talk English good, but not dumb. Fucking bullshit.”

“I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” I hiss as we argue over the peacefully sleeping Hope. 

“Could at least make up better lie.” Geno rolls over to ignore me.

“Yes. Don’t you get it? It’s a shitty lie. And if I had a secret girlfriend, why would I leave the messages on my phone?”

He rolls back over. He looks more confused than furious. “Why you not get rid of coach’s texts, though.”

“Zhenya.” I’m pleading for him to listen. To really hear me. “It was on the bus ride back to the arena. I forgot they were there. They weren’t important to me; getting home to you two was important.”

“Coach has beautiful wife and family.”

“Yeah, he does. He’s an asshole who’s risking everything by cheating.” I let that sit in the air between us. “I would never. I love you both too much.”

“How I’m know you not really smart liar?” Geno looks unsure, like he wants to believe me, but he’s been angry for too long to let it go. “Leave on phone is big plan. You never here. Maybe I’m not know you any more.”

“Zhenya.” Careful not to jostle Hope, I work my hand between where his arms are crossed over his chest. I need to touch him; I need it like I need air or ice. “There is no big plan. They’re not my texts. They’re Sully’s. I’ll call him and make him tell you.”

He stops me before I can pull my hand away to pick up my phone. “No. Sully be mad at you. Make you bag skate.”

He laughs a little at his own joke, and then I process what he says. _He believes me._

Geno threads his fingers through mine; I edge closer to him, careful not to jostle Hope, who’s slept through all of this. “I’m see texts and get so mad. Want to break things. Want to punch you because I’m so mad. Then I’m cry because I’m know truth.” His voice is thick with tears. “I’m just dad at home with baby. Boring. Talk about how many poops, or new word she say. I’m not interesting, not like big hockey star, or TV lady.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry if I ever did anything to make you think that.” I lean across Hope and kiss the corner of his eye where the tears leak out. His cheekbone. The edge of his lips. “I love everything about you. Every word you say.”

I’m crying, too.

“Can I come home?” It’s all I want for Christmas. If I can go home, I’ll never ask for anything ever again.

“Pleaserightnow,” he says and swipes the tears off his cheek.

“Not right now, though,” I say with giddy laughter. “The roads—” My heart is beating again, fluttering in my chest. It’s the first time in months I’m not shriveled and old. I feel alive, like I can do anything. I could carry the two of them back home, through the ice and snow as if it weren’t there.

We hold hands and breathe, our angel still asleep between us. I’ve never been so grateful to Duquesne Light Company and for an ice storm so bad no one could drive. “You’re right, though,” I say as he kisses my fingertip. “I _am_ gone too much. I have to travel during the season, but once my endorsements are up, I’m not doing any more.”

“Syutushka—”

“Zhenya. We have money. More money that we could ever spend. But we don’t have more time. I can’t get the last six months back, but I’m not gonna lose more.”

I pull the blanket off our heads and sit up; Geno does, too. This way, I can kiss him fully, like I’ve dreamed about.

“I’m wish we could go home,” he says, and I want that more than anything.

“Let’s try.” I jump out of bed and throw on my heaviest boots. “My snow tires should handle the ice okay. I just—I want to be home.”

We bundle up Hope and wrestle Stanley into his carrier; we carry her through the parking garage to my Range Rover, and I pray my snow tires are up for the slick roads. Hope wakes up just enough to ask where we’re going. “Home, baby. We’re going home.”

She falls asleep again as I strap her into the car seat. I drive out onto the icy road, frozen and dangerous toward our home in Sewickley.

But in truth, it doesn’t matter. Where ever Zhenya and Hope are, that’s home.


End file.
